Staying in France Archives - Page 3 of 5

August 22, 2019

Remote WiFi and GSM Switches

I have had two IT related issues of late. Both involve devices on the house networks that have ‘locked up’ and needed a hard bounce – a complete mains power down, wait and switch on again. One of these was in our house in France and one at home.

The one in France was a lock up of the broadband router. Clearly once this is down all comms stop and we do have various monitoring systems in place that are important. Searching online came up with a GSM based mains switched outlet. This simply plugs into the a wall socket and the device to be controlled plugs into it. You need to fit a PAYG SIM into the device and then you talk to it with your standard mobile using SMS messages from anywhere there is a mobile phone signal. As the SMS usage will be very low, a GBP10 SIM will last for ages but it is important to remember that if a PAYG SIM is not used for 3 months it automatically gets cancelled. Fortunately the device does acknowledge back via SMS each command received so it is possible to maintain SIM activity remotely. The device has a number of facilities such as temperature measurement and activity scheduling. This has now sorted the French Connection and I can bounce the router anytime it misbehaves. Here is the Amazon reference.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00PKGL7YC/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

The home issue was on a device on the home wired network which was important to keep running. Very occasionally and usually at an inconvenient moment it would lock up and the only way to reset it was a hard bounce. The device is a pain to get at to do this and if we were away from the house even more so. Fortunately the WiFi router at home is reliable so all I needed was a WiFi equivalent of the GSM device mentioned above to give the offending device a controlled hard bounce. Amazon offer one such device which was easy to set up and works a treat. For those interested it accepts speech commands via Alexa etc

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B07KXBQKXX/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Hopefully now we will have remote control of these two weak links in our communication backbone.

Similar or related subjects : –

May 19, 2019May 21, 2019

Droning On and another Toy

Another drift to the dark side I am afraid.

I bought a drone.

Yes I know ….. Lots of reasons why I justified it to myself and I went through the prior post decision making process and got a ‘yes’ as a result.

Seriously I have been considering one for sometime. In France the house sits looking out over a valley and we often see deer and foxes (but not yet a wild boar) and I have always hankered for being able to get up close to them. France aside my work on turret clocks often needs a close view of the clock face without the hassle of ladders and scaffolding. So two good reasons (in my book anyway).

I had been watching the market trying to decide when to jump. The two big players for the semi professional market are DJI and Parrot. Both these run out expensive. Then in January I got a mailshot from Banggood about a new device to be launched by Fimi called the X8 SE. This seemed to be only available from Banggood and was on back order status. I missed out on the first delivery but finally my toy arrived last week.

It is amazing. And at a fantastic price.

Not ever owning a drone before I cannot compare with anything but it is so easy to drive and has so many automated flying routines. Battery life is around 30 minutes and range is stated as 4km and it can skim along at 18m/s speed (yes that is 65km/hr ….). It does 4k video and 12M stills.

So that is my entertainment sorted for summer, should summer finally arrive.

fimi x8 SE drone and controller — Fimi Drone and associated controller.

It is worth watching Dustin Dunhill on YouTube if you want a serious review of the device. He does tech reviews and there are 3 or 4 Fimi videos on his platform.

Similar or related subjects : –

Droning On and another Toy

May 10, 2019

French Connections, House Numbering, Shed Building, Left and Right Hand Threads

Sorry it has been a bit quiet but we had three weeks in France albeit with not the best of weather. As ever a few jobs on the list and some new experiences.

The village where our house is located has always had very ambiguous addresses such that deliveries were a nightmare unless by Post. The parish council decided to solve this with a ‘numerifcation’ and tasked a local man to decide on street names. Given that there are probably less than 200 properties in the whole village and very few of these in our road, we were surprised to be allocated number 436.

On arrival and taking a wander round the village the numbers appeared totally erratic and certainly not conforming to the norm of odds one side of the road and evens on the other. It then dawned on me that the numbers were related to the distance from the starting point of each road relative to the village centre. We were therefore 436 metres along the road from the first house. A quick cross check on Google Earth confirmed this as the distance to the centre of our gateway.

Now you could label this as French perversity but I think it is rather elegant. Deliveries can now find us easily and if someone does a barn conversion mid street a new unique number can easily be created rather than 6A or similar. The council provided us with rather nice enamelled number plates and these match the new street name boards. We noticed on the drive home that one or two other villages we passed through seemed to have had similar initiatives. No doubt Macron will claim credit.

The first test of the new address was when I ordered a garden shed (abri de jardin) from Alice’s Garden and it found us successfully. The aim was to have a storage shed for our ride on lawn mower. The shed was a bit on the low cost side but did arrive OK in two flat packs. When opened up it all seemed a bit flimsy. Two of our friends had arrived to stay and they got roped into putting it together. The instructions called for two people and predicted 2 to 3 hours work. It took four of us a bit longer than this and lots of self tapping screws later we had a shed.

alices garden shed — Garden Shed from Alice’s Garden for ride on mower storage but with door too narrow …. another fine mess

Given the flimsy nature of the materials it was surprisingly sturdy. The one flaw in the plan was the mower would not go through the door …. I had measured across the wheel width and not across the cutting bed. We left our friends with the challenge of solving this minor issue …. so far they have managed to widen the door opening and it now needs a new enlarged door.

We had also ordered an electrically operated sun awning and this was installed while we were there. This is a seriously heavy piece of kit that the two technicians were struggling to lift between them. The installation involved mounting three plates on the house wall and then ‘dropping’ the awning housing onto these with retaining fastenings. Because of the style of block work used in France they tend to use chemical based fixings for anything substantial that needs mounting. The technicians arrived, measured up, drilled and chemically bonded 12 lengths of M12 studding into the wall. After the prescribed setting time they attempted to mount the plates only to find their logistics team had supplied them with left hand thread studding and right hand thread nuts. Much French cursing ensued.

Out came the angle grinder and the studs were chopped off. Rummaging around in their van they found some more right hand thread studding, re-drilled and re-bonded this in place and finally got round to mounting the awning – which was a real struggle to lift even with three of us wobbling on ladders. They didn’t leave until gone 7pm so not the most cost effective installation quote by the salesman.

awning in france also called a store — Awning in place with correct thread studding used

This excitement apart we had a good stay with a round of golf at Souillac, a village festival and an excellent meal with our neighbours and their extended family. The house is looking pretty good now and perhaps next time we can just relax with nothing on the ‘To Do’ list – perhaps.

Similar or related subjects : –

March 8, 2019March 13, 2019

A Bit off Piste – An eventful flight to Toulouse

This has nothing to do with model engineering but thought you might find it amusing/interesting.

Following my wife having spotted some low cost tickets to Toulouse from London Gatwick, we decided to make a quick trip to France to check out that all at our house was OK. The flight bookings were with a well known budget airline that has orange corporate colours.

We checked in OK and the flight pulled away from the stand dead on time but 5 minutes later we were back where we started from. As the Captain said ‘one of his shortest flights’. Apparently a critical sensor in the port engine had gone AWOL. Technicians were called and we sat for 2 hours on the plane while they analysed and fixed the problem.

Off we went once again but having missed our takeoff slot we were now at the back of the taxi queue. Finally we were sat at the end of the runway and the brakes were released …. only for pandemonium to break out in the cabin. The crew started rushing round and shouting to stay in our seats. The take off was aborted and we sat mid runway. Within minutes the plane was surrounded by all manner of fire appliances.

Apparently a passenger’s lithium power tank had burst into flames. I guess his or her laptop or phone’s battery had died while we were waiting for the sensor to be fixed and while topping up from the power tank the charging current surge had upset things. The crew had been quick to put the offending article in a fire proof box.

After blocking the runway for 6 minutes, we were escorted off the runway by the fire crew vehicles to a quiet area of the airfield. A team of fireman boarded the plane and took away the offending article.

While 6 minutes does not seem long there would have been a lot of landings and takeoffs blocked. Had we been airborne when the smoke appeared we could have been sliding down escape slides and the weather outside would not have made that much fun.

Because there had been an incident the airline procedure required that the crew had to be changed so they could be debriefed. We were therefore now faced the delay while a new crew was found. Further to this an offer was made that anyone wanting to leave the flight could do so (they didn’t ask for ‘any passengers of a nervous or superstitious disposition’). A number of passengers decided this was the best option. This meant a baggage crew had to be found to find their bags in the hold. So we had a baggage crew and a flight crew to wait for.

When the new crew arrived they had to search the cabin to match bags to passengers to ensure nothing owned by the departing passengers had been left behind (suspicious or otherwise).

After a total delay of 5 hours (still sitting in our allocated seats), we finally got airborne for Toulouse.

I won’t extend your boredom by telling you about the hire car shambles on our arrival.

We think we might think twice about flying to Toulouse another time but I have to say all credit to the flight crew, the technicians and the fire services for their swift and professional actions.

Postscript : – better to travel hopefully ….. we then had a 3 hour delay on the way home. Weather at Gatwick delayed the flight out to Toulouse. Think we will stick to the ferry next time.

Similar or related subjects : –

January 21, 2019January 21, 2019

January in France

Bonsoir Monsieur Macron

Decided to make a quick visit to France to catch up on jobs and make sure the house was surviving winter OK. All went well until we got south of Limoges when the Autoroute overhead signs started signally a problem at the junction we normally leave the A20. We passed through our local toll peage and it was swarming with gendarmes and when we came off we were met by an equally large contingent of boys in blue. We were turned back from the exit and sent further south on the A20 to the next exit to come north once again. At first we thought this might be a ‘yellow vests’ protest but it later transpired that Monsieur Macron was holding a meeting with the regional mayors in our local town and the town was in lock down as a result.

Tado Thermostat System

The Tado thermostat system installed last time has worked really well. I turned up the house temperature via GSM as we got off the ferry and we (finally after our Macron detour) arrived to a warm house without the usual standing around with our coats on while the wood burner thawed things out. Lovely system and have now fitted three of these to family properties.

Wireless Tag Monitoring

Temperature here is around 5C with nights dropping negative. I have fitted an 80W tubular heater inside the spa pump cabinet with a frost stat on it. This is doing a good job in keeping the temperature around the pumps above 5C regardless of the outside temperature. I have fitted one of the Wireless Tags inside the cabinet so I can monitor what is going on remotely.

Super Blood Wolf Moon

Woke up last night in the small hours and thought the outside security lights must be on it was so bright in the bedroom. Looked out and it was like daylight from the moonlight. Didn’t think anymore of it and went back to bed only to discover on this morning’s news that I had missed the lunar eclipse. Having received a Philip’s 2019 Stargazing Guide for Christmas I really should have read it before the new season started. That having been said it is way too bright to get the telescope out during this visit.

Been a good trip so far with lots of ticks accomplished on my to do list so I might get some time to sit and catch up on my reading and writing before we head back next week.

Weather forecast is predicting snow ….

Similar or related subjects : –